Global Villages

NikosASalingaros: The general ideas offered here prove useful in extending urban patterns to the electronic city. The notion of an IntelligentEnvironment defines the urban connectivity of the new millennium. On top of the existing path structure governed by Alexandrine patterns (Salingaros, 1998), we need to develop rules for electronic connectivity (Droege, 1997; Graham and Marvin, 1996). To define a coherent, working urban fabric, the pattern language of electronic connections (which is only now being developed) must tie in seamlessly to the language for physical connections. Already, some authors misleadingly declare that the city is made redundant by electronic connectivity. Such opinions ignore new observed patterns, which correlate ElectronicNodes to PhysicalNodes in the Pedestrian urban fabric. The two pattern languages will most likely complement and reinforce each other.

FranzNahrada: Welcome Nikos to this discussion and I must tell you its a real honor to have you with us. I am glad to hear that you agree its worth discussing the "pattern language of electronic connections". My attempt is to find a pattern language to identify, describe and understand the places where the physical and the virtual meet, so I would rather ground my effort in the "Alexandrine space". My hypothesis here is: the physical nodes of the so called information age (the place where digital signals are transfered into analog realities) will have as deep influence on the patterns of our settlements as did the automobile. Allready there were many books by urbanists like Saskia Sassen, Manuel Castells, Mitchell L. Moss, William Mitchell from MIT, describing the enormous effects the media and communications revolutions have on the cities and also the ones you quote are very important. But in my opinion, the potential and dynamics of this evolution goes way beyond what we have seen so far and "splintering cities" is not the last word - I agree with you that we will face a new pedestrian urban reality, but also a ompletely new outlook on physical production. I know it is difficult writing a pattern language of objects and structures which are yet to fully manifest, but this is exactly what interests me most. This pattern language should help us identify the more "timeless" from contingent and unsustainable/disruptive elements and you have seen that I do not try to jump to conclusions. The pattern language of Global Villages is a goal which requires careful studies, repeated evaluation and speculative thinking in the best meaning of the word. So it is something which will eventually arise out of a long period of theoretical and practical progress that we seek to facilitate here.